


Is That Not Strange

by Nevcolleil



Category: Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 03:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benedick would kill for Beatrice. Claudio would die for Benedick. But perhaps all is not yet lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is That Not Strange

Claudio has but one aim that evening... and it is to get himself truly, and thoroughly, inebriated, beyond all concerns.

Don Pedro cautions him against it. "I know that you felt as though Benedick were jesting when first he issued his challenge," he says, blocking Claudio's exit off of Leonato's grounds. "But surely by now you know that Benedick means to kill you, Claudio."

The Prince does not say this without some share of the anguish clouding Claudio's judgment. 'That it's come to this...' seem to say his sad eyes, staring at Claudio with such pity. 'That my brother has betrayed me and my kinsmen are sworn to destroy one another.'

But Claudio cannot share in the Prince's empathy. Of _course_ he knows! Is that not why he needs now not to be cognizant of the utter _ruin_ that has become of his life? 

Were Benedick not now Claudio's enemy, the death of fair Hero would be enough.

Were Benedick not now Claudio's enemy, the fact that he and his Prince, the too trusting and yet genuinely well-intentioned Don Pedro, have been cast as villains _would be enough_.

Were Benedick not _now_ Claudio's enemy, the fact that it was the villain Don John who Claudio _allowed_ to cast him as such would be enough reason for misery. 

But Benedick _is_ Claudio's enemy. He has declared himself to be, and - as he has declared - will _kill_ his old friend, his long-time lover, unless Claudio raise his own weapon against a man he-

Claudio edges around Don Pedro and will not be cautioned back. He wants not to think on Benedick. He wants not to think on any one sorrow that has crowded into the gaping wound Don John has slashed into Claudio's once happy life. But _certainly_ he does not want to think on Benedick.

And so, of course, there at the bar, half-way through his second bottle of spirits, who should perch himself upon the stool next to Claudio's own? But Benedick. 

The no longer so jovial, once jovial Benedick.

The Benedick who is no longer Claudio's companion. Nor his- anything, Claudio supposes, after everything.

There is only one thing to say to it.

"Barkeep!" Claudio calls out to wench working the other end of the counter. "We'll be needing more whiskey down this end of the bar _presently_!" And as if to prove it, Claudio tips the near-empty bottle in his hands against his lips and draws deep, ignoring the very wench-like, _un_ lady-like hand gesture the barkeep throws him for his trouble.

Benedick says nothing. He does nothing. He is eerie in his silence, which is so unnatural to his nature. Claudio cannot look on him.

But for Benedick's ears only, Claudio says, "Whiskey... bottles and bottles of it." That is what Claudio needs, when all other pleasures which he could desire have been taken from him. "Because the gods hate poor Claudio, and so I shall give them someone worth hating."

A drunkard. A fool who goes out on a night around town with the threat of death hanging over his head - the wrath of a man as accustomed to and capable in killing as the soldier Benedick.

A scoundrel, who will be married tomorrow to the grieving Leonato's niece, red-eyed and smelling of spirits. Will the maiden even notice Claudio's disheveled appearance, he wonders? Is she even a maiden? What manner of unpleasantness must mark a woman so unmarriable as to have her bound to the villain whose ignorance killed her exceptional cousin?

"Do they?" Benedick asks, speaking for the first time since the last time he spoke to Claudio. Calling his companion a villain. Promising Claudio's death at the end of Benedick's pistol.

Now Benedick takes the bottle from Claudio's hand, but he does not remove it from him. He takes a long swallow of the whiskey and then passes the bottle back.

Claudio swallows, around an emotion that burns even more sharply than the liquor.

To watch Benedick's lips press where Claudio's have pressed... To feel Benedick's fingers against his own, just a brush as Benedick returns the bottle-

"Does not Benedick hate poor Claudio?" The words are past Claudio's lips before he can examine them.

"And is Benedick now a god, then?" Benedick answers, the slightest quirk at the corner of his mouth the one ghost of his old self present on the bar stool next to Claudio's.

Those somber eyes are not Benedick's. The stiff posture does not match that of the man whose body arched and writhed on top of Claudio's own. 

The comparisons inside of Claudio's head undo him and he says, with far more emotion than he promised he would give this Benedick when next they met, "I worshiped him as one would a god." Claudio speaks so quietly, surely Benedick cannot hear him over the pounding of his broken heart? And yet Benedick flinches with every word. "With word and touch and- and kiss..."

With some horror, Claudio realizes why his words have become thick and unwieldy upon his tongue. He squeezes his eyes tightly shut lest the treacherous wetness escape from them, and lifts the bottle of whiskey to his lips once more.

"No... not as a god, Claudio," Benedick is saying. "As a man. A man who did worship you back."

' _God_.' Claudio sets down his bottle and almost indulges the urge to shatter it in the setting. To hear Benedick acknowledge their relationship pains Claudio almost as much as his seeming to forget had done.

"And yet you would kill me now," Claudio scoffs, without humor. "On the word of a woman..." And here is the real rub. "A woman who meant nothing to you a week ago!"

"She meant not nothing, Claudio."

"Did she mean so much more to you than I, then?" Would that be better? Could Claudio better weather this most foul betrayal if it were not betrayal? If it were simply the consequence of Claudio's having been a fool long before Don John played him as such.

Now it is Benedick who will not look at Claudio.

"No one could mean so much to me as that," Benedick confesses, his words all but lost in the din of the bar around them and Claudio's still too quickly beating heart.

"Then _why_ , Benedick? Why must we now be enemies?"

"Because she _loves_ me!" The answer bursts from Benedick as would a bullet from his pistol. He looks Claudio suddenly straight in the eyes and gone is that other Benedick whom Claudio did not know.

Here is the passion that Claudio is most familiar in attributing to his Benedick, if none of the good humor.

' _I_ loved you,' Claudio wants to say. He wants to shout it so that all the world might hear! But has he not said the words so many times before? Beatrice has said the words but once. And it is _she_ to whom Benedick bends his will.

Claudio's love will do him no good in this.

"She loves me with no promise of some benefit to herself," Benedick continues, "for she had no idea that her love was requited when first I heard her profess these feelings."

"Hush, Benedick!" Claudio pleads. He cannot listen to this.

Beatrice loves Benedick because Hero gave her reason to do so! And Benedick requites those feelings through mechanations that even Claudio had some hand in, though his hand had been forced. 

"She loves me without reason-"

"And with what reason do I love thee?" Claudio asks. 

Be it helpful or not, the words will contain themselves no longer. 

" _I_ love thee, Benedick! Beyond all reason..." Loving a man who would betray him is one thing. That Claudio loves Benedick _still_ -

And he does, Claudio realizes, snapping his mouth shut like a trap. He does, God help him... 

"You love my body in your bed," Benedick says, not entirely unkind, but eyes blazing with a heat not only of passion. "You love my jests. You love that Benedick loves Claudio, so long as that love need not conflict with-"

Claudio's act is born of despair. Of, yes, too much liquor and too much grief in too short a period of time, but also of despair that not only does Benedick now love another. He knows not that Claudio truly loves him and has since that first night they shared more than blankets in their tent on the battlefield. 

"And this?" Claudio asks. "What love of self and my own interests do I reveal in giving you _this_?"

Benedick gapes at him. Because, while speaking, Claudio drew his pistol from its holster and- as their onlookers scrambled from them, before Benedick could respond in kind - Claudio set his weapon on the countertop before Benedick as a priest sets a lamb before an altar.

"What-"

"Think that you've found a love worth more than the love of your friend Claudio," Claudio says, fighting his emotions as much as the spirits in his blood to speak evenly and sit straight atop his stool. "Or think that I love thee not. It _matters_ not."

"Claudio..."

"I will accept your challenge because I am no coward, but I say to you," Claudio says, meaning every word, "That if you draw your weapon with intent to kill your friend, who loves you, then your friend shall you kill, because I will not fire upon the man that I love. Not for Beatrice. Not for any woman."

It is a fierce pledge. One deserving of all the drama with which Claudio professed it. 

Which makes it all the more disappointing that he can not manage to dismount his barstool without stumbling off of and away from it, nearly landing on his ass just after professing his solemn pledge.

Benedick's movements seem unfairly graceful and quick to Claudio's drunken senses.

But nonetheless, there is Benedick, stood at Claudio's side, and catching him before Claudio can conclude his stumble in a rather graceless coupling with the floor.

"I would draw my weapon on no man in a state such as this," Benedick says, some of his lost humor apparently rediscovered at this sight of Claudio's rare and obvious inebriation.

"My state will not have changed by morning," Claudio promises, concentrating only on Benedick's hands on his arms, Benedick's body warm and hard when Claudio leans into it.

Benedick draws in a breath and Claudio presses their bodies together with yet more purpose.

"I love you now," he whispers against the stubble on Benedick's jaw, "and when I am sober, I will love you still."

But Benedick doesn't embrace him. Doesn't speak.

Claudio has had quite enough of Benedick's silence. "When I loved Hero, my love for you did not change," he accuses. "It would not have changed. Benedick, you _know_ this!"

"I do..." Benedick admits, after Claudio has waited - and suffered through the waiting - for a beat more. 

At last, his arms rise and wrap themselves around Claudio as they have on so many evenings.

"Let's get you to bed," he says, as if nothing _has_ changed. As if they are just two companions, two soldiers, seeking merriment in a moment of peacetime, before stumbling back to their tent together to use their bodies as a further respite from war. 

He stops them at the bar to retrieve Claudio's pistol and tuck it back into its holster.

"I do not need it," Claudio protests, and Benedick rolls his eyes, though his lips have curled into their first real smile of days, and sighs as if Claudio has said some trifling thing that he is only reluctantly amused by.

"No, I suppose you don't," he says. And then he kisses Claudio.

Which, really, is the most important aspect of their discussion, to Claudio's mind. That it ends in kissing.

"Come with me," he begs against Benedick's lips.

Benedick would kill for Beatrice. Claudio would die for Benedick. But, perhaps, if Benedick will do this for Claudio... Perhaps all is not lost just yet.

"As you wish," Benedick speaks into their kiss, and he leads Claudio back to Leonato's home.


End file.
